LAUSD vows to protect immigrant, LGBTQ+ students during Trump term

Students engage in a jumping activity at school.

By Howard BlumeStaff Writer

Published Nov. 18, 2024 Updated Nov. 19, 2024 6:38 PM PT

L.A. Unified takes quick stand in opposition to Trump on immigration and LGBTQ+ protections.
School board President Jackie Goldberg brings four emergency resolutions on the issues in her last regular meeting.
Goldberg: “The people yelling on the other side yell really loudly. We’ve got to yell louder.”

The Los Angeles school board united in defense of immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community Tuesday, affirming the school system as a sanctuary for these students and employees and calling for a new focus on politically informed civics education.

In all, four resolutions were brought forward by L.A. Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg — and all passed without opposition.

“The guy is back,” Goldberg said, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, “and he’s going to try even harder to disrupt families, to disrupt people, to disrupt our communities.”

Goldberg was referring to Trump’s pledge to deport millions of immigrants who are living in the country illegally.

In one resolution, her goal was to reaffirm an immigrant sanctuary policy that the L.A. Unified board approved early in the first Trump administration.

District policy already prohibited staff “from voluntarily cooperating in any immigration enforcement action, including sharing information about students’ and families’ immigration status with any immigration agent or agency.”

Under the updated resolution, L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho must return within 60 days with a plan that includes “training for all teachers, administrators, and other staff on how to respond to Federal agencies and any immigration personnel who request information about students, families, and staff, and/or are attempting to enter school property.”

And district families are to be kept informed “in the language that they speak.”

Trump has accused immigrants of increasing crime and taking jobs from citizens. In a Monday social media post, he confirmed a report that he would order the military to be involved in deportations as part of a declared national emergency.

The sanctuary resolution calls Trump “the candidate whose previous administration created a brutal policy of immigrant family separation which did irreparable harm to thousands of immigrant children and parents.”

Trump has defended the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, calling it an effective deterrent to immigration.

About 1 in 5 students are considered to be learning English; many of them are immigrants, although they are not necessarily in the country illegally.

The Central American Resource Center, an immigrant rights group, estimated Tuesday that, in the Los Angeles region, there are 1.6 million children with at least one immigrant parent and more than 20,000 recent arrivals who attend L.A. Unified schools.

Goldberg made no attempt to contain her anger at Trump: “I am so sick and tired of people calling people who have come to this country from terrible situations that they had to flee — and calling them crooks and murderers and all of that other stuff. I don’t care what anybody says. Immigrants built this country, and everybody in this room is related to an immigrant, unless you’re Native American. So all of us are immigrants.

“The people yelling on the other side yell really loudly,” she added. “We’ve got to yell louder.”

Board member Rocio Rivas had to pause to compose herself as she spoke and said she wants schools to be a place where students and staff are “safe, respected and affirmed.”

“I did not become a citizen until I was 22 years old,” Rivas said. “And all throughout my education, and even when I was at UC Berkeley, I always felt that fear, and I know fully well what it is to grow up undocumented and knowing that at any moment, the life that we have here can be taken away.”

Speakers in favor of the board action included former school board member Monica Garcia, who brought forward the original resolution during her time on the board.

No one spoke against it.

“The words we speak here are spoken in a safe place,” said board member George McKenna. “If, in fact, the dangerous people that are trying to and seem to have taken control of our government start acting on this, it will require more action than you probably are accustomed to.”

McKenna, 84, the board’s oldest member and a veteran of the civil rights movement in the South, said the potential for turmoil and danger could surpass what he experienced in his youth.

Public schools are required under federal law to enroll any student within their jurisdiction, and in California, school officials are not allowed to ask about immigration status. Many families have mixed immigration status — with some family members in the U.S. legally but others not.

A separate Goldberg resolution referred to “a documented increase in anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in the United States,” stating that “these narratives divide communities, elevate risk factors, and compromise mental health and school engagement.”

Although it noted that LGBTQ+ students already are specifically protected by the school district’s nondiscrimination policies, the resolution would extend such protections to family members of students as well as to employees and their families.

The LGBTQ+ resolution also updates district policy — with language about enforcing “the respectful treatment of all persons to include gender identity and gender expression.”

The resolution describes the 2024 presidential race as resulting in the “election of the candidate who campaigned on an anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.”

“Lesbian and gay kids and trans kids and non-binary kids are really going to hear a lot of crap in the society as a whole,” Goldberg said in an interview. “And we just want them to know we have their backs.”

Under the banner of parent rights, Trump wants to end school board policies that limit the ability of school staff to notify parents if their child changes gender identity or pronouns at school.

Trump recently voiced strong support for this view of parental rights at a conference organized by the conservative group Moms for Liberty.

“Some of these people on the boards, I think they don’t like the kids very much,” he said at that gathering. “You have to give the rights back to the parents.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July that shields teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights and prohibits K-12 “forced disclosure” rules.

A third Goldberg resolution takes aim at the education portion of Project 2025, a think tank effort that set out policy goals for a second Trump administration. In terms of education, there is broad but not complete alignment between Project 2025 and Trump’s statements on education.

Project 2025 emphasizes giving parents the right to use their share of public education funds to subsidize private school tuition, a goal that Trump supported in his first administration. The policy framework also calls for “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.” Backers say they want to remove what they call liberal politics and “indoctrination” from the classroom.

Critics see this policy proposal as an effort to whitewash history, limit diverse perspectives and shut down discussion of controversial topics.

The Goldberg resolution vows that “we will do everything in our power to protect and defend students, families, and staff from the harm intended by Project 2025, and to defend all students’ right to a public education.”

Under the resolution, Carvalho was directed to present a report with a “comprehensive overview of all of the Project 2025 policies that impact public education and public school students, families, and staff, and a detailed overview of the District’s plan to defend public education and the students, families, and staff we serve.”

The fourth Goldberg resolution takes aim at recent widespread efforts to remove the discussion of controversial subjects or current events from classrooms.

The resolution states that, to make students “ready for the world,” they must become “critical thinkers, to be able to understand current events, to be able to understand how events impact our politics, to know the effects of specific policy proposals, and to be able to understand all sides of key political issues.”

Moreover, “it is the district’s responsibility to prepare students to be able to make distinctions between news and opinion in an increasingly fractured information environment rife with misinformation, polarization and questionable sources.”

England and France, Goldberg said, “start what I would call political education in the upper elementary grades all the way through high school, and their kids have a lot better take, in my opinion, of what’s going on in modern, contemporary political issues.”

An example, she said, is “what can Trump actually do, and what things does he say he can do but he really can’t.”

Within 160 days, Carvalho would have to report “about the feasibility of establishing a Contemporary Political Issues course” for the high school level and whether it could be required for graduation.

The staff analysis also would cover “what credentials and professional development would be required to ensure the district has the workforce to implement this new course, and what would be the most appropriate grade or grades for students to take this course.”

Also under review would be changes needed to curriculum at all grade levels to prepare students for high school coursework in this area.